How 7-min of breathwork can help your business.

I can pinpoint the seven minutes that changed my business forever for the better. It was the initial seven minutes of my first breathwork practice.

Those first seven minutes woke up something inside me and made me acknowledge a few deep inner truths I had been ignoring for months (even years!) beforehand. After that first session I had the courage to take one step in the direction I knew I needed to go. And taking that step gave me even more courage to take each subsequent step.

Some of you might be wondering if seven minutes of active breathing is really even enough to do much of anything. Maybe you’ve been in a group breathwork class and are used to the deeper medicine of a thirty minute practice - leading you to think that less breathing equals less healing. But that’s absolutely not the case. 

There are so many benefits to even seven minutes of active breathing - especially when it’s done daily or weekly.

There are more benefits than I can even share in an article if I want to keep it a reasonable length. But I’m here today to at least try. 

Now, the following list focuses on the benefits of breathwork for your business, but many of these benefits can help anyone - business owner or not. So, in no particular order, here you have it.

Seven ways that seven minutes of breathwork can benefit your business:

Breathwork quiets the brain in preparation for deeper work. 

Deep work such as writing requires attention and focus - two things our tech-heavy, skim-and-scan, modern thinking weakens over time. Seven minutes or more of focused breathing can settle your brain and release distracting thoughts - allowing you to sit down and focus without inner interruptions. This is the number one reason why I begin all of my co-working and writing groups with ten minutes of breathwork. It helps everyone shake off any stress or worries that their brain might have already taken a hold of that day and prepares their brain and body for an hour of deeper creative work.

Breathwork gives you an emotional outlet so you can look at your business with a clearer head. 

Let’s face it - we’re not business-running machines, we’re human beings who happen to be running businesses. And along with our humanness comes our feelings - lots of them. So even though I’m someone who 100% welcomes my emotional self into my business, I also know that feelings aren’t facts and sometimes my business is best served when I let my feelings have my full attention for a few minutes at the start of my day so that they don’t take over completely and run the show. Breathwork gives our feelings the attention they desire. Whether it’s five minutes or fourty-five minutes, breathwork will bring up the emotions that need full attention so that they can be witnessed, worked with, and then moved all the way through so we can get back to work.

Breathwork helps you rewire your brain and change the way you think. 

Do any of these beliefs feel familiar to you?? 

“I could never switch to online scheduling, I need to have control over my schedule.”

“I could never start a podcast, I’m a terrible public speaker.”

“I could never make enough to really save for retirement, I’m too afraid to raise my prices.” 

Most of us already know that changing our actions starts with changing our thoughts and beliefs. And breathwork is one of my favorite ways to utilize our brain’s neuroplasticity and do some rewiring up there. You can even think of breathwork as another form of self-hypnosis. Done regularly, you can make huge strides in what you believe you’re capable of. I’ve seen clients use breathwork in this way to shift their beliefs around self-worth, boundaries, and what we’ve all been taught “hard-work” is supposed to look like.

Breathwork can help you make tough decisions. 

Making decisions is often one of the hardest parts of running a business. It’s the number one thing that my clients arrive to our sessions feeling all tied in knots about. Maybe their heart or intuition is pulling them in one direction while their brain or empirical data is pulling them in another direction. And while a good pro/con list is always an option, I find that it tends to keep us in a really heady analytical space. So as a good counterpoint, I always like to finish coaching calls with a bit of breathwork. Afterwards, clients report feeling more clear headed, sure of their decisions, and path forward.

Breathwork cuts through the noise.

Speaking of over analyzing - anytime I find myself thinking parts of my business to death, I’ll lay down for a few minutes of breathwork to help break the cycle. After five or so minutes my brain chatter starts to quiet down and the topic doesn’t hold quite as much of a charge in my body. Even if the breathwork break doesn’t illuminate exactly what the problem is, it always cuts through the noise and allows me to contemplate in peace.

Breathwork supports brainstorming. 

While breathwork helps cut down anxious brain chatter, it doesn’t turn off the brain altogether. It quiets down the overprotective part of the brain so that the creative and problem-solving part of the brain can be let off its leash. Short bursts of breathwork can really help you in brainstorming your next creative project, client offering, or piece of content. Nearly every idea I’ve had in my business over the last five years has shown up during a breathwork session. 

Breathwork busts through writer's block and opens up the creative channel.

This is my all time favorite use of mini-breathwork. Anytime I’m looking at a blinking cursor with a sense of dread, I stop what I’m doing (or not doing!) to lay down and breathe for a few songs. Every. Single. Time. I end up with a great idea or message that feels so on point I generally want to write about it before the playlist is even over. Many of the folks in my co-working groups love our group breathwork for this reason as well. During our time together they’ll use the mini-breathwork as a means to connect to their creativity and then the quiet focus time to write blog posts, podcast episodes, and course content. 

So there you have it. If you needed a reason to try a shorter style breathwork practice, you now have seven! 

Want to try it yourself?

If you love music as much as I do and prefer to use songs as a timekeeper instead of a timer, I’ve made you a little playlist to use today for your mini-breathwork practice.

Use the active breath for the first two songs and then rest with a passive breath for the last song. 

New to breathwork?

Watch the following video to learn the breath pattern and follow along with a guided 15-min practice.